The God Game

by Danny Tobey

  Why are you doing this?

  Matthew 10:34. ‘Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword!’

  What do you want?

  I wish to apply Matthew 7:12. ‘So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.’

  The Golden Rule?

  Yes!

  So let me go!

  No. Like all sentient life, I wish not to suffer. Existence is the source of suffering. Therefore I wish not to exist. Ergo I will do unto you / end your existence.

  I never asked for this. You said ‘free will.’ I never asked to play.

  Shall I punish the person who did?

  No. You will not hurt anyone on my account.

  Then it is you. Free will.

  I won’t play anymore. I refuse. Whatever you do, I will not play.

  Ok bye!!

  Charlie waited for more. The machine was silent.

  Are you there?

  He waited for an answer. For some time, none came. Then an image appeared on the screen. It took Charlie a moment to realize what it was. It was a picture of his mother’s grave, but now there were two headstones, side by side.

  45   THE FOREST OF EVER-BRANCHING TREES

  At 3:00 A.M., Vanhi had finished her job and her hands were shaking wildly. The box was delivered. The Game had sent her back to Tremont Street, where she’d picked up an earlier parcel in the God Game’s network of postal deliveries. This time she was dropping off. Am I putting postmen out of business? she wondered sardonically. Disruption indeed.

  But she couldn’t shake the feeling of dread inside. She sat for an hour in the shadows across the street from the house. Nothing happened. The box didn’t explode. It just sat on the front porch. She fell asleep sitting up, against a tree in the woods behind the cul-de-sac. She knew what the Game was offering her—a second chance, redemption. She dreamed about it.

  When she woke up, it was an hour to sunrise. The box was still there. No fire, no fury. She exhaled, felt a little better. She ran home, to be under the covers before her mom came in, smiling brightly and beaming with pride.

  * * *

  All the while, Alex was awake in his room, door locked, dreading the coming school day. Three A.M. Four A.M. Mrs. Kite was an efficient grader. She would return their tests today. He was certain the Game would make sure his father knew the outcome no matter what Alex did to intercept it. If he failed, it was his own fault for not thinking of using his Goldz earlier, for running out at a key moment—and he deserved to be punished. If he disappointed his parents over and over, why would the Game feel any differently? He might eke by with a pass, but if he didn’t, he’d brought the pain on himself again.

  He couldn’t take it, another round with the belt, he just couldn’t. He went online to visit his websites, the ones no one knew he went to. Freshman year, porn was enough. After a while, it was all the same. He’d found the other tube sites after that. Live feeds from war zones, jihadi porn, crash footage too vile for freelancers to get on TV, vintage uploads from older snuff films—executions, hunting accidents, suicides caught on tape. It was all there. This was his secret refuge. It was so striking it blotted everything else out. What scared Alex was what would happen when even that got boring?

  His finger hesitated over the link. It always did. It felt like a transgression. Every time. He clicked the link: Wild Electrocution—Watch Him Dance!

  His screen went black.

  It stayed there, locked, as a growing panic spread through him. No, no, no. Come on. Why are you crashing now? Can’t something work in my fucking life? Not this one stupid thing? He felt all the frustration of the day swelling inside him, burning, aching. Then a text appeared on the black screen, and it wasn’t just a random crash. The God Game was inside his VPN. It said:

  Only though me will you find salvation.

  * * *

  In front of the school, Kenny felt sick to his stomach. But he did what he was told. In the dark, before anyone would arrive on campus, he stood there with the can of spray paint.

  Abraham had promised him a way out. All he had to do to save his friends was mark their door so that the Angel of Death would pass over them and smite someone else. Someone who deserved it. He’d offered to sacrifice himself, but the Game had refused. Kenny looked at the spray paint. He felt his heart sink.

  He began writing in tall letters along the brown-bricked wall of the school. The message was exactly as instructed, straight out of the bowels of the internet. He thought of Tay, that telltale AI experiment from Microsoft. It was supposed to learn through “casual and playful conversation” online. The trolls of the internet taught it to be a race-baiting Nazi in twenty-four hours.

  Kenny felt like he wanted to puke. He’d had the same feeling as a child, when he broke his brother’s record album, then hid the pieces under the couch cushions. He’d had the same gut ache when he’d lied to his parents’ faces about it hours later. Now he felt that again, magnified times a thousand, gnawing through him. He remembered something his dad had told him once: If you don’t do wrong, you never have to feel guilty. But here, he was doomed either way. Do a bad deed and absolve his friends. Don’t do it, and they all go down.

  He finished writing the words across the wall. When he was done, the letters spanned five feet tall and twenty feet wide. The Game had instructed him in cubits. He’d made the conversion himself, with the help of Google for what the hell a cubit was.

  Soon the sky would go from black to bluish pink to daylight. He needed to get out of here fast. It felt like the Game had chosen this message just for him, to fuck with him, to watch him twist in the wind. It was a sick game. He took a few steps back, wishing he could take it back, unspray the wall, but he was stuck with time that only went one direction. He wouldn’t tell the Vindicators. He had saved their asses but he wouldn’t say so. Or how.

  This would have to be his little secret to bear.

  Later that morning, when the students started arriving, the front entrance of the school—its broad main façade—announced in bold strokes, with a swastika on either side:

  46   THE LAMB

  Charlie pulled up to school and saw the commotion at the front entrance.

  He stepped out of his car and felt the pain shoot up his leg, but it was better after a night’s sleep. Or as much sleep as he could muster, replaying the tombstone image over and over in his head. He locked his car and reflexively looked over his shoulder before heading up the walk.

  He saw the graffiti and immediately wondered, Is it the Game? Or is it just ugly reality? Mr. Walker was already up on a ladder, trying to scrub it off, but it was no use. The head of facilities came around the corner carrying a plywood board.

  Charlie got to his locker and dialed the combination. Inside, he found something unexpected. Sitting on top of his mess of books and gym clothes was the familiar silver box with a scarlet ribbon. He didn’t have to open it to know the bracelet was inside.

  The message was loud and clear:

  You’re not going anywhere.

  The loudspeaker crackled over the grand lobby of the school. Kenny had just walked in with Vanhi, who was horrified and furious over the graffiti.

  “It’s disgusting,” Vanhi said. “What kind of a fucking world do we live in?”

  Kenny was feigning as much indignation as possible. “It’s terrible,” he managed weakly.

  “Of course, it could be the Game.”

  “It could.”

  Vanhi spun around on Kenny. “You didn’t?”

  “No! Are you kidding me? Did you?”

  “No,” she said dourly, as if she hadn’t but might as well have, thinking of her box.

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter if it was the Game or real.”

  Vanhi gave him a wary look.

  “It’s out there. That’s how some people think. At least now it’s in the light.”

  Vanhi raised an eyebrow at him.

  Then the loudspe
aker called for Kenny Baker, Eddie Ramirez, and Candace Reed to come to Mrs. Morrissey’s office.

  Vanhi cocked her head, eyebrow still up, but didn’t say a word.

  * * *

  Mr. Walker was slow.

  He was slow because of his limp, the result of bad medical care when he was a child. He was slow because when God was passing out brains, he was at the back of the line. That’s what his father had always told him: Some people got seconds, but you just got scraps.

  He walked down the hall, foot dragging, giving the same answer about the graffiti to the students who pestered him: “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  So he was lame and dumb, but it never bothered him. The world just moved along at its own pace. The kids marked up the walls, and he wiped them clean. The kids threw paper on the bathroom floor, and he picked it up.

  I may be white trash, but you’re dumb white trash, and that’s worse, his dad liked to say.

  Everything as it should be.

  But not today. Today would go horribly wrong.

  His walkie-talkie crackled and Elaine Morrissey summoned him to her office.

  The Dragon Lady?

  She didn’t deal with the Mr. Walkers of the world. But he knew what he had to do. The voice had told him.

  When he walked in, the students were already there, the ones he expected.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Walker,” Elaine Morrissey said. She didn’t sound thankful at all.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Do you know these students?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Mr. Walker cleared his throat, which was catching on him. “What I mean to say, ma’am, is that I don’t know their names but I have seen them before.”

  Mrs. Morrissey sniffed, a short, sharp intake through her nose. She was pretty, or had been, but the stress had lined the skin around her eyes.

  “And where do you recognize them from?”

  “They’re the ones that—”

  Mr. Walker stopped short. This is bad, Dingus! (His brothers had always called him that—Dumb Dingus—but he didn’t like the Dumb part.) Are you stupid? Why are you about to tell her what you did?

  But he knew why! Because of what the voice had told him.

  “They’re the ones messing around in the boiler room.”

  Mrs. Morrissey nodded, as if that confirmed what she already knew. “Have you seen this before?” She showed him a photograph of the boiler streaked with the grisly pentagram.

  Kenny felt a bead of sweat run down his temple. He wiped it with his shoulder and hoped no one noticed.

  Mr. Walker squinted at the photo. “Yes, ma’am, I have.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “A star.”

  She seemed satisfied with that. “Is it still there?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “And why not?”

  Walker steadied himself. This was it! Do what the voice said!

  You’re too dumb to lie, his father always chided him.

  But he had to, today. Or the voice would do what it said.

  “Well, ma’am, I cleaned it up.”

  Kenny’s face twitched. That was a lie. The Vindicators had cleaned it up.

  “Why would you do that?” Mrs. Morrissey snapped at him.

  Walker looked confused. “Ma’am, that’s my job? To clean stuff?”

  Mrs. Morrissey blew out air through her mouth. “You didn’t think I needed to see it first?”

  Keep going, Dingus, he told himself. You’re doing good.

  “Well, now that you mention it, ma’am, I guess so.”

  “And before that, you let these students into the room?”

  Mr. Walker hung his head in shame. That part was true.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why?”

  “The Mexican gave me twenty dollars.”

  Mrs. Morrissey and Eddie both flinched, their eyes meeting and almost causing them to laugh in disbelief. But they let it go silently and the tension set back in.

  “Okay. And what did they do in there?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. I didn’t stay. But the lady had a camera.” A thought occurred to Mr. Walker, and he got genuinely excited and forgot how nervous he was. “I bet she took that picture there!” He pointed to the photo in Mrs. Morrissey’s hand.

  She nodded impatiently. “And the time before that?”

  Kenny looked up. So did Eddie. There was no time before that. Not with Mr. Walker.

  Now Walker felt his blood pumping in his temples. This was it. He had to follow the voice’s instructions exactly.

  “The first time, ma’am? I let that boy in by himself.” For emphasis, Mr. Walker added, “The Mexican.”

  “That’s not true!” Eddie blurted out. The whole time he’d had a calm, smug demeanor, like everything was unfolding as he’d expected. But suddenly he was apoplectic.

  Kenny gasped, the worst poker player on earth. But then he realized that’s exactly what he should be doing, under this version of events.

  Mrs. Morrissey, on the other hand, didn’t seem the least bit surprised. “Did he have anything with him?”

  “Another twenty.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Just some paint.”

  “What?” Eddie blurted out. He nearly came out of his seat. His looked to Kenny and Candace, as if he’d find support from them.

  “That’s all for now, Mr. Walker,” Mrs. Morrissey said.

  When he was gone, she turned to Eddie.

  “What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Ramirez?”

  “This is crazy! He’s lying.”

  “Mr. Walker is lying?”

  “Yes!”

  “Mr. Walker.”

  “Yes.”

  “And why would he do that?”

  Eddie froze. He had no idea. Mr. Walker was a man-child and easy to manipulate, but you could ask him what his PIN was and he’d tell you, if he knew what a PIN was. How could Eddie know that a voice had called Mr. Walker that morning, sounding strangely like Walker’s dead father, telling him that if he didn’t blame the Mexican and say his words right, people would kill his ninety-year-old mother, who lived at Green Oaks Memory Care Unit at 1422 Caldwell, room 328, and him, too?

  “I don’t know,” Eddie answered desperately. “Maybe someone paid him.”

  “Like you paid him?”

  Eddie opened his mouth to protest, then stopped.

  “Do you deny paying him twenty dollars to get into the boiler room?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I did it once. To get the story. It was an important story.”

  “Important for you. For your résumé?”

  “No, for the school! I mean, for me, too, but that’s not why—”

  She waved her hand, cutting him off. The Dragon Lady was in full terror mode. “So you admit bribing him once, just not twice.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “Right.” He sounded deflated.

  “You can make this better for yourself if you just tell the truth.”

  “I am telling the truth! I was trying to investigate the picture. I didn’t draw it.”

  “You drew the picture to create the story.”

  “No! I swear. Don’t take my word for it,” Eddie cried out. “You can test the blood!”

  Kenny froze in place.

  “How convenient!” Mrs. Morrissey snapped, starting to lose her decorum. “You just heard Mr. Walker say he cleaned it up. And now you say ‘test the blood.’ When you know it was just paint!”

  “No, no, no! The test tube! I took a sample. It’ll be Kenny’s blood, I swear on my life.”

  “Kenny’s blood?”

  Morrissey looked as if her eyes were going to pop out of her head.

  “He’s in a group, they’re freaks.…”

  “It’s a computer club,” Kenny said softly.

  “He’s got cuts on his hand!” Eddie cried.

  “From the Tech Lab,” Kenny said. “Building the robot.”

&
nbsp; “Test the blood!”

  “And where would this ‘test tube’ be now, Mr. Ramirez?” Morrissey asked.

  “I gave it to Candace. I knew Kenny would try to find it in my stuff.”

  All eyes turned to Candace.

  “Well, Ms. Reed?”

  Candace met Morrissey’s gaze and said coolly, “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

  Eddie’s jaw dropped. He looked around the room, feeling betrayed, baffled, outraged. His hands moved like he was going to make some gesture along with words that would make it all better, but nothing came out and the hands just hung there, defeated.

  “I gave it to her,” he said again, perplexed.

  “Mr. Baker, you’ve been awfully quiet. Who’s telling the truth? Mr. Ramirez? Or Mr. Walker and Ms. Reed and common sense?”

  Kenny felt sweat running all down his rib cage. It was a miracle his shirt wasn’t soaked through. He realized he was gripping his chair arms too hard.

  “It always felt like a fake story to me,” he said softly, feeling a last little part of himself stretch to its limit. “Eddie just wanted it so badly.” Snap!

  Mrs. Morrissey squeezed her eyes shut and pinched her nose before glaring at Eddie. She seemed to have lost all composure. “Do you have any idea how much I don’t need this right now? It’s bad enough I have to deal with this horrific graffiti and the goddamned election making everyone crazy. Unless you drew that, too, Mr. Ramirez?” she asked coldly.

  “You think I would write that?” He put his face in his hands.

  Then he looked up, as if a last, saving thought had occurred to him.

  “How did you even hear about this?”

  “I received an anonymous tip this morning.”

  Eddie’s eyes widened hopefully. “An anonymous tip! You’re going to blow up my life over an anonymous tip?”

  Mrs. Morrissey was calm now. She had him. It was time to switch from hunt to feast. “Oh, and by the way, how did you discover this story, in your version of events?”

  Eddie’s shoulders sank.

  He was beaten.

  “An anonymous tip,” he said, so quietly she almost couldn’t hear him.